


I’m Not Going Anywhere

by Celeastral



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Cutting, Depression, Fantasizing, Gen, Pre-Game Saihara Shuichi, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:27:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27107959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celeastral/pseuds/Celeastral
Summary: A peek into the turning point of Shuichi’s life, pre-game.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	I’m Not Going Anywhere

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings abound. You have been warned. Please make sure your mental state is healthy before delving in. I wouldn't want this work of fiction to affect the real world.

My eyes flickered over the rest of my messy bedroom for a second before returning to the TV. 

It was the only thing ever to make a difference in my life, pathetic as it was. The only thing to give me a decent amount of pleasure, the only thing for me to obsess over, the only thing to make me smile in all of its twisted moments, the only thing to let me have an escape from this tortured life, if you could even call it a life. It wasn’t enough for me to simply watch it, I _needed_ to become it, because I was so worthless that nobody wanted to even be reminded of me. It was almost the only thing I thought about, besides the state of my sorry existence.

As the inappropriate but cheerful ending song played, I gritted my teeth, remembering there would be no episode until the next day. There was nothing to do, my old games bored me after all. Maybe _it_ made it so that they couldn’t hold my interest any longer. Bah. It wasn’t like I had money to buy any more. My parents gave up on me so long ago, and I couldn’t blame them. They left me here to rot, and it was going to stay that way. A _hikikomori_ , they said, yeah, it was true, and the only contact we had in this apartment was for meals, but for a minute. I could hear their hushed whispers in the rooms outside, wondering what I was going to amount to, and how they could get me out of this state. Guess what? Nothing.

Someday, I’ll be gone from this earth, and they’ll probably be thankful for that. They’re only pretending to care. Look, I never had any friends. And I never will. Everyone is different from me. I can’t talk loudly, I always stutter, and whenever I’m around someone that wants to try to be friends, I push them away, or they leave by their own volition. I used to feel jealous of the characters in the media, but I’ve accepted that my fate is inevitable. It would be better if I never existed at all. The only thing keeping me here still is that show and its stories, but unlike the characters’ deaths and executions, the release would probably be sweet and blissful for me.

I drew a knife that I hid away below my bed, and went to the bathroom, taking care to lock the door. I didn’t care that they heard me. All that was in my head were my intentions. I cleaned the blade, because if I was going to die accidentally, it would be by my own hand. Not by disease. I raised the blade to a place below my wrist, feeling the cold, wet steel against my skin.

The edge left a thin pink line, blood soon seeping over old scars. I cut another. And another. The first time I did this, euphoria overwhelmed me. But now… there wasn’t anything like that, just a small sense of what used to be. I stared at the blood making its way down my arm, infuriation growing with every second. So, I cut a few more grooves, as tears dripped down my face from the sensation. It brought a rush, ending with calm. Pausing for a minute, I sighed, deciding I was done. I reveled in the sting of water flushing the blood from the wounds away, and quickly did the routine, bandaging the new cuts up. It made me feel real. But it was fleeting.

I made my way back to my room, but the gloom soon crept over me. I sat on my bed again, and watched the ceiling. My boredom got the best of me, so I scrolled through memes and dumb pictures, and a few earned a humorless chuckle from me. I leaned over and grabbed my favorite figurine from its special place, a small ledge on the wall. Though my room was shrouded in darkness, the light from my computer was enough to let me see the details. I wished I could be as smart, as clever, as knowledgeable like her. A long time ago, I probably had a decent amount of intelligence, but now it was limited to trying to predict what the current episode was headed next. I let out a dry laugh at that, though it quickly turned to a grimace as I turned to look at the clock.

22:00. Tomorrow would be another day at school, going through the motions, barely talking to anyone, and avoiding the nasty people. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t expend the effort anymore. Maybe I should skip, even though my parents would barge into my room and pressure me to go. I cave into that demand so much anyway, that one time wouldn’t hurt. I’ll tell them I’m not feeling well, even though that would be an understatement. I laid down on the bed, though my mind began to nag at me, and I tried to not remember. It insisted on fixating on that day, when I thought someone was waving to me, and I waved back. That was meant for someone else behind me. 

It hit me. No one cared enough about me to say a greeting.

The moment repeated over and over, until I despised the fact that the memory existed, a piece of the record of my fuck-ups. I pulled the covers over my head, and probably somewhere in my brain, it told me to suffocate. The blankets were heavy, yet the weight had a sense of comfort to them. It soon gave me a restless energy, but I had no energy to throw them off, so there they remained. Time passed, until I somehow got the strength to look at the clock again. How long had I stayed in here? 24:00. What seemed like two minutes were two hours. Wasted hours. I didn’t even do anything.

* * *

Apparently, I fell asleep. The next time I opened my eyes, the first rays of light streamed into my room, but were weakened or stopped by the thick dark curtains that hid the window.

* * *

I awoke, startled, to the sharp smack of the door against the wall. My father yelled at me to get up, his footsteps like thunder to my ears. His hands swept the curtains on the windows away, the room bathed in a shocking white. I sat up and scrambled back, my bandaged arm exposed in the hurry. I tried to conceal it, but he’d obviously seen. He roughly waved his phone in front of my face, shouting, the picture itself screaming of another failure, the pink stark against the porcelain surface. He jabbed a finger at my arm. Another at the pile of trash I allowed to pile up on the cabinet.

The door slammed again. So it happened. For the next few minutes, I couldn’t feel nor comprehend, like a nothing floating in a sea of nothingness. A nobody.

It dissolved into gritting my teeth, as the first tears leaked from my eyes. The torrent flooded my face, and I couldn’t stop it, the snot clogging up my nose, as if every amount of it was choking me. I reached for a tissue, not finding any in the empty box. Pressing my face into the bed, the sobs all came out until there was none left to give.

Eventually, I stopped crying, but I went back to sleep, wanting to escape everything.

* * *

My eyes opened again, but I knew sleeping even more was impossible for now. My stomach rumbled, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten yesterday, and of other confining obligations. School was out of the question, period. My brain told me to stay in bed. It was too difficult to get up. Futile.

Eventually, I dragged myself out into the hallway, sheepishly scanning the house for my parents. No sound came from around the place, so I assumed they were at work, and went to the kitchen. Carrying the meager meal I had gotten from the refrigerator, I scarfed some of it down along the way back to my room. The wrappers were left on the cabinet with the rest of them.

The clock showed 16:00. I spent an entire day already. One more hour and the show would be on. That was the only thing I was living for at this point, and the trial was close to the end, right? It was almost time for my second favorite part. What would it be for the culprit? Would they get acupuncture before being electrocuted through the needles? Hung with a rope as a thousand knives left a mark across their body, the blood leaking out into a puddle on the ground, then pulverized into a mush? Maybe that was too mundane or reminiscent of past executions.

What were better were the trials, where each participant strove to prove or disprove the evidence they had collected. Each piece had a purpose, and it was so invigorating to see their expressions as their hope or despair squeezed the marrow of their real desire for life. The logic and the understanding as they traced the lines to and from the evidence, culminating in their finding the culprit guilty.

It was time for the end of the fifth trial. I clicked on the TV and watched it, unsurprised for most of the parts leading up to the execution, which I had already figured out beforehand. Was this also starting to lose its color? No, not yet. I grinned as the culprit’s face crumpled in pure terror. 

The culprit ran away from the roller coming after them, but tripped. Hooks rose from up above and bored into their flesh, leaking blood as they lifted them. Pistons appeared all around them and battered their body, leaving it even more bruised. They were still alive, so Monokuma took a sledgehammer and pummeled them into a smear on the floor.

It was glorious! But I wanted more… I could imagine it all…

By the way, weren’t applications for the 53rd season open? Maybe I could enter. Forget it. I wouldn’t be a chosen one. There were probably thousands of other people who wanted to join in on such an exciting game. It could take a long time before they chose anyone, and it’s not like I was going to stick around for much longer. Why was I still here, lingering on? Why? It would be easier to save the time and the suffering and just get a quick death on the street.

Some part of me didn’t want to be another line in the obituary. No. I wanted to be known forever, as the boy who died in such a gruesome way everyone vomited at the sight. Strung up, with my ruined body bared for all to see. This was what I had to do, and if I went out like that, it would be absolute ecstasy.

I could concoct a complex murder, keep everyone guessing until the very end as an Ultimate Detective. But as always, there had to be a little chink in the armor. Images of dead bodies from past seasons flashed through my head, some remaining longer than others. Little clues were left here, a few were left there, but in the end, the combinations struck final blows to the alibis of the suspected and newly accused.

How would it feel to kill a person?

A hack at the throat, severing their windpipe, a stab to the chest, as the knife ground against the bones of their ribcage, another into their stomach, the foul odor of blood drifted in the air…

Ah.

There was a problem.

Being obvious would cut the suspense.

Well, it would depend on the circumstances.

But there were no limits… in an execution.

As an Ultimate Detective, a punishment drawn from the most extreme files would be most appropriate. I let out a dry laugh, which sounded more like a gurgle… wouldn’t something like that be my last words? All of my classmates would watch and listen to me… 

The punishment had to be drawn out. Ropes lashed onto my arms and legs, leaving me immobile and in a crucified position while I faced the class. The rough fibers chafed against my skin. 

It truly began. Small knives slit shallow gashes all over… Everyone cringed as the blood cascaded down my body, dripping down and forming a pool. The blades punctured and sliced my veins and arteries, spraying blood as thicker streams of it oozed down. Every amount of blood needed to be casted out of my body…

And with one swift motion, a spinning saw dropped from above at the perfect moment, grinding and crunching its way through my face. It exposed my fractured skull, some mangled pieces showing through the lump of flesh, the rest as fragments, dust, and remnants of teeth on the ground. The stink of bodily fluids filled the air, moist liquids gleaming as they trickled down my torso. 

They could do whatever they wanted to make it more brutal after I was dead…

Another blade hacked through my chest and the sternum. Mechanical hands grabbed my ribs and ripped them outward, displaying every organ for them all to see. Moving downward, they shredded the skin and muscle from my lower torso and dragged my intestines out, dangling from the cavity where they used to be. They glistened from the light shining on them.

The art piece was finished.

Abhorrent, dreadful, disturbing, horrendous, and repulsive, everyone would say. They were absolutely wrong. I would call it beautiful, in every sense of the clichéd word.

My hands shook as I turned my computer on and typed in the web address, filling out all of the parts of the sign-up form while ignoring the irrelevant terms and conditions. Time to watch and wait. And somehow get through the next few weeks, but at least there was a purpose, a vile hope, sustaining me now.

Oh, yes… a truly disgusting murder… for an equally disgusting execution.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Critique is welcome! This fic was spontaneous, but I hope I conveyed his mind’s transition well and didn’t get much wrong. Erm, about his father, even I don't know if it's his mind amplifying everything or whether it's implied abuse. I don’t want to glorify anything; there’s a conflict between the desire to be sincere and the desire to shy away. From the accounts I’ve read, not every depressed person cuts, but for some…
> 
> One day, I was listening to DSBM (and grindcore), and given the genres, I had a thought stemming from Shuichi’s video. I love him, but it just happened that he became the vehicle for this fic. I wondered what it would be like to dive into such an obsessed mind, and how desensitization can affect them. Like your first exposure to horror movies vs. your 40th movie. Thus, the idea came about, and I decided to use first-person for a more intimate view. If you're wondering about me, these thoughts are very much foreign ground, but it's funny how by writing this out, it sounds suspicious. (That's what a ____ would say!)


End file.
